The H5N1 avian flu didn’t cause deaths of wild
birds in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region last week, the government’s food
safety agency said.
Lab tests proved a “low-pathogenic flu,” not H5N1,
killed hundreds of wild ducks in coastal lakes in the Anapa and Temryuk
districts in the Krasnodar region last week, said Alexei Alekseenko, spokesman
for Rosselkhoznadzor.
No poultry for human consumption was infected,
Krasnodar’s administration said on its website Nov. 30. Governor Alexander
Tkachev ordered a quarantine of areas and banned hunting there to keep the
virus from spreading, the press service said.
Most bird viruses don’t infect humans, according
to the World Health Organization. The disease can be spread by wild water fowl,
the WHO says.
Rosselkhoznadzor will eliminate dead birds from
the area and will not cull other ducks, Alekseenko said. There were about
12,000 wild ducks in the Krasnodar areas last week, according to
Rosselkhoznadzor data.
To contact the reporter on this story: Marina
Sysoyeva in Moscow at msysoyeva@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this
story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
